


pizza for breakfast

by hiyoris_scarf



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Galotine's 2020, M/M, Sickfic, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange, background Gueira/Meis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22960525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiyoris_scarf/pseuds/hiyoris_scarf
Summary: “Open up,” he said. Galo, too miserable to protest, let Lio slip the thermometer between his lips. It beeped, and they both looked down at the readout.“Uh oh,” said Galo.Galo gets sick on Valentine’s Day.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 20
Kudos: 296
Collections: Galotines day 2020





	pizza for breakfast

**February 11**

“Valentine’s Day? Really?”

Not even Lio’s tepid response could dampen Galo’s enthusiasm.

“It’s my favorite holiday!”

“You say that about every holiday,” Lio retorted, crossing his arms. He might as well have not spoken at all. The fire in Galo’s eyes was indication enough that he would be celebrating Valentine’s Day to the full extent of his burning soul. Which meant, of course, that Lio would be dragged along for the ride.

“I’m not big on stuff like this,” he admitted, because it felt a little mean to let Galo barrel joyfully into an endeavor that Lio couldn’t pursue with his whole heart.

He loved Galo. Lio did love him, with a ferocity that nearly scared him. If anything, Valentine’s Day felt a little ham-fisted. There weren’t any conversation hearts engraved with: “You held part of my soul inside your body, and I’m not sure you gave all of it back.”

Galo took Lio by the shoulders. He could be very gentle, for such a strong person. He still handled Lio much like a very cautious, very well-trained Rottweiler would handle a newborn kitten.

“I know you aren’t,” he said kindly. “But…can you let me?”

Lio looked at him. He looked at Galo, and saw in his face how much this would mean to him. Perhaps they spoke different languages in this area, but Lio could learn how to translate.

It would almost be easy, if it was for Galo.

“Okay,” he said.

Galo kissed him swiftly, then immediately called a florist and put in an order for several dozen roses.

**February 12**

Galo walked through the door, and his whole body seemed to droop as he crossed the threshold. Lio wordlessly got up from the couch and pulled him into a hug. His hair smelled like smoke.

“Bad shift?” he asked, petting the back of Galo’s head.

“Awful,” Galo mumbled into Lio’s shoulder.

“Do you want to tell me?”

Galo buried his face deeper, until Lio wasn’t sure how he could even breathe. Then, suddenly, he straightened again, his face a rictus of agony.

“Bistro Champagne is booked solid for the fourteenth,” he said miserably. “And so is everywhere else. I’m so sorry, Lio! I tried everything! I wanted to take you somewhere fancy and elegant, and—Lio?”

Lio’s mouth was bent in a weird, scary frown. It was the only way he could contain his laughter, but it made him look less sympathetic, and more like he was holding in diarrhea.

“That is…so sad,” he agreed, afraid that Galo would start talking again. “But really, whatever we do will be fine. We could even stay home and make something.”

Galo gave Lio a sideways look.

“Can _you_ cook?” he asked.

Lio thought about it. He didn’t really want to suggest boxed macaroni and cheese.

“We could learn a new recipe…together,” he suggested lamely, but Galo’s face brightened.

“Lio,” he said earnestly. “You are smart, and amazing, and I love you. With our powers combined, there is no recipe that can defeat us.”

Galo’s excitement was contagious. Lio grinned back. He couldn’t help it.

“So,” he said, poking Galo’s cheek. “Team Thymos-Fotia will take the gold in this Valentine’s Day chef smackdown?”

Galo pursed his lips.

“Exactly, except it’s Team _Fotia-Thymos_.”

Lio smirked. “Should we consult the marriage certificate?”

And Galo suddenly pretended he couldn’t read, which often happened when Lio backed up his side of an argument with any form of official documentation.

**February 13**

Galo came into the living room, shivering.

“Why’s it so cold in here, Lio?” he complained. “I thought you liked it nice and toasty.”

Lio glanced at the thermostat, then at Galo, who gravitated over to the radiator as visible shudders wracked the whole length of his body.

“It doesn’t feel cold to me,” he said. A nasty weight settled in the pit of his stomach.

Galo hunched over in front of the radiator. “F-f-freezing,” he mumbled.

Lio left the room, and came back with a thermometer.

“Open up,” he said. Galo, too miserable to protest, let Lio slip the thermometer between his lips. It beeped, and they both looked down at the readout.

“Uh oh,” said Galo.

**February 14, Early Morning**

Meis woke to the sound of a phone ringing.

“Gueira,” he mumbled. Gueira remained facedown in his pillow, resolutely asleep. Grumbling, Meis threw an arm across him and snatched the phone from the bedside table. Through bleary eyes, he saw Lio’s number on the caller ID.

He answered.

“Whathefuckisit.”

“Have either of you ever been sick?”

Meis rubbed his eyes, jostled slightly more awake by the overt panic in Lio’s tone.

“Sick?” he repeated.

“Like the flu.”

Meis sat up in bed, elbowing Gueira in the neck. Ignoring his husband’s yelp of pain, he turned on the lamp next to the bed and settled the phone more securely against his ear.

“Boss, are you sick?” he asked.

Gueira was still cursing himself awake, but the serious note in Meis’ voice silenced him.

“No,” Lio said immediately. “It’s Galo. He was running a fever last night, so I put him to bed early. But now he’s burning up.”

Meis frowned. As Burnish, they hadn’t needed to worry about illness. The Promare had vaporized infection in much the same way it had healed injuries. There had never been even a stuffy nose in the Burnish camps.

Things were very different now.

“I’m not worried about myself,” Lio said, as though he could read Meis’ mind. “I did some research. I’ll be fine.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end. Meis could hear how worried Lio was. He could hear in that silence how helpless he felt. And Meis knew that above anything, Lio hated feeling helpless.

“Gueira and I will bring some stuff over to you,” he said. “Don’t worry, Boss. He’ll be just fine.”

For another moment, Lio remained quiet.

“Thank you.”

**Mid-Afternoon**

“I feel amazing!”

Galo weakly raised an arm, saluted Lio, and let it drop heavily back to the bed. His eyes were at half-mast, probably thanks to the liberal dose of Theraflu Lio had funneled down his throat.

“When’zour reservation?” Galo slurred. “Don’t wanna be late.”

Lio sponged Galo’s sweaty forehead with a cool washrag.

“We didn’t make one, remember?” he said soothingly. “We decided to stay home.”

Galo’s eyelids drooped, his pupils crossing.

“That doesn’t seem right,” he mumbled. And then he was fast asleep again.

Lio sighed. He rarely felt in over his head. If he didn’t know what action to take, he did research, and consulted his generals. If that yielded nothing, he made an educated guess. But when it came to Galo, Lio found himself uncharacteristically hesitant.

What if he’d done everything wrong? What if it wasn’t just a short-term flu, but something much worse? Should he be making chicken soup? Was he even capable of making chicken soup? _What if he burned down their apartment trying to make chicken soup?_

The doorbell startled Lio out of his doom spiral. He hurried to the front door, carefully shutting Galo’s bedroom door behind him.

When Lio opened the door, he didn’t know how to process what he was looking at. There seemed to be someone standing there, but their entire upper body and face were obscured by an explosion of red. The heady scent of fresh roses hit him like a freight engine.

A young woman’s face popped around the side of the colossal bouquet.

“These are for…” She squinted at a card attached to the bouquet.

“Lio…Forte?”

To his horror, Lio felt his throat begin to swell up.

“I’ll take them,” he said sharply, gathering the bouquet in his arms. It almost didn’t fit through the door, but he wrestled it inside, nearly slicing himself open on the thorny stems.

“Goodbye,” he said to the delivery girl. He nearly kicked the door shut before his conscience kicked in.

“Wait,” he ordered, before stalking out of the entryway. In the living room, he set the roses on the coffee table delicately, as though they were made of spun sugar. Then he snatched his wallet, dug around in it for some cash, and crushed a generous tip into the shocked young woman’s hand before shutting the door in her face.

If anyone had looked in the window during the next half hour, they would have seen Lio Fotia sitting on the couch, cradling a bouquet the size of a healthy five-year-old in his arms, and trying his very best not to cry.

**Morning**

It was the sun through the eastern-facing window that finally woke Galo. His head felt like someone had taken five or six swings at it with a sledgehammer. He ached _everywhere_ , he was unbelievably thirsty, his eyes were bone dry, and in general he felt more like a sack of wet dirt than a human being.

“Good morning,” said someone to his right. With herculean effort, Galo turned his neck in the direction of the voice.

It was Lio, of course. Who else would be sitting there, right next to Galo, looking so very beautiful, and so very tired?

“Lio,” he said.

Or, he tried to say it. What really came out of his desiccated throat was little more than a wheeze. Immediately there was a glass of cool water against his lips, and Galo drank.

And drank. And _drank._ Holy shit, had water always been this good?

Lio took the cup away before Galo could aspirate on it. He smiled, reaching a hand out to cup Galo’s cheek. Galo nosed into it, sighing deeply.

“What time’s it?” he mumbled.

His eyelids desired nothing more than to shut again, but he didn’t want to stop looking at Lio. He felt like he had been wandering through a rough, lonely dream all alone, and now Lio shone down at him, his face brighter than the fiercest star.

“It’s about nine thirty.”

Galo’s heart soared. He hadn’t ruined it.

“Good…we can still have our Valentine’s Day.”

Lio’s thumb swept tenderly over his cheek.

“It’s the fifteenth, my love.”

Galo’s eyes flew open. He stared at Lio, utterly stricken.

“I—I missed it?”

No. No, he _couldn’t_ have missed it. He’d made so much of it, and he’d dragged Lio into his planning and excitement—all for nothing. If his eyes hadn’t been so painfully dry, Galo could have wept.

“I missed it,” he whispered hoarsely. “I missed Valentine’s Day.”

“Can I show you something?”

Lio’s voice was sweet and calm—almost like he didn’t think this was a tragedy of the highest degree. Galo gazed up at him, speechless with distress. Finally, he gave the smallest of nods, and Lio smiled angelically.

“Good,” he said. “I think you’ll like it.”

What Lio wanted to show him was apparently outside the room, so Galo began the torturous job of moving his body out of bed. Lio helped him sit upright, and slid a soft arm around his waist to bolster him as he—slowly, carefully—stood up.

“The great Galo Thymos rises again,” said Lio, as Galo triumphantly straightened to his full height.

“It’ll take more than a little flu to knock me over,” he proclaimed. “A few germs are no match for my burning soul!”

Lio chuckled, and kept an arm around his waist to support him as they shuffled awkwardly through the doorway and down the hall.

Galo almost didn’t recognize their living room. The curtains were drawn, completely blocking out the morning sunlight, and the lights in the room were dimmed. Every horizontal surface was covered in candles. Music was wafting from some hidden speaker: a soft, lilting violin melody tumbling over itself like a mountain stream. At the center of the coffee table was a huge glass vase, stuffed and overflowing with blooming red roses.

As his brain struggled to align this romantic alcove with their plain, familiar living room, Lio sat him safely down on one side of the couch.

“Well?” he asked. If Galo hadn’t been so dumbstruck, he would have thought Lio almost sounded nervous.

“What do you think?”

Galo opened his mouth, trusting, as he always did, that something would come out of it.

“Huh,” he said, intelligently.

Lio’s eyes glassed over. “I should have done balloons too,” he whispered in agony. “I knew something was off.”

Galo shook his head violently, then winced and clutched his stiff neck.

“No, no, nonono!” He looked at the candles, at the roses, and then at Lio. It was then that he smelled something delicious: cheesy… _spicy_.

“Did…did you order the Inferno Volcano Margherita MegaMax Valentine’s Day Couples Special Deluxe?!”

Lio rarely blushed, and Galo wasn’t sure in the dim lighting, but it seemed like his cheeks were much pinker than usual.

“If you don’t mind pizza for breakfast,” Lio said, sounding uncharacteristically embarrassed. Galo stared at him, agape.

“Lio, have you _met_ me?”

Lio blinked. “You make a point.”

As Galo sat on the couch, basking in the soft glow of several dozen candles, Lio retrieved the pizza from the kitchen where it had been kept warm and deliciously melty in the oven. He lifted two generous slices onto plates and set one in front of Galo, who looked like he was on the verge of tears.

“You…”

He swallowed thickly, his eyes traveling from the pizza, to the candles, to Lio’s face.

Lio’s eyes crinkled at the corners. He set his pizza down on the coffee table before sitting down on the couch next to Galo.

“Is this okay then?” he asked. There was a note of vulnerability in his voice that made Galo’s heart swell far beyond its normal capacity.

That Lio had done this—that he had gone so far out of his comfort zone to give Galo the Valentine’s Day he had asked for, and that he had done it alone, made Galo feel that he wanted to either cry, or fold Lio as tight as he could into his arms and not let go until they were both withered husks.

Lio noticed the kaleidoscope of emotions on Galo’s face, and his forehead wrinkled.

“Galo, do you feel all right?”

Galo opened his mouth, croaking: “I love you so, so, so, _so_ much.”

Lio stared at him for a long moment, looking like he was formulating the answer to some complex riddle in his head. Then, he seemed to arrive at a conclusion. He leaned in.

Galo squirmed backward.

“Wait, wait—I’m sick!” he squawked.

Lio took him by the shoulders, his eyes shining, full of something warm and powerful that made Galo’s stomach drop away.

“Yes,” Lio said. “I know.”

Then he kissed him, and for a long while the pizza on the coffee table was left to cool.

**Author's Note:**

> it was so fun to write this for the galotine's gift exchange. love u galo gang.


End file.
